Review: Song of the Deep

Young Merryn and her father live by the sea, where her father fishes for his living. Merryn’s mother is dead, so it’s just the two of them living in the shack by the sea–at a time when being a fisherman grows more and more difficult, there are fewer fish being caught every time he goes out to sea.

Until one day when her father doesn’t return.
While SONG OF THE DEEP starts out with the despair of our heroine finding herself alone, we are carried along on a sweet little story about the courage it takes to save the ones you love.

We follow Merryn as she makes herself a submersible to search the sea for her missing father. What she discovers is a whole new world of mermaids, leviathans, clockwork seahorses, and the magical items she finds along the way to help her in her quest. It feels like the story for a game (which is what it is, a PlayStation game), but will appeal to Middle Grade girls. Merryn is courageous in her adventures despite her fears, and her compassion for even those who look like monsters is what ultimately helps her to find success in what would otherwise be an impossible situation.

Sure the story suspends belief, from the submersible to Merryn spending so much time under water, to finding the items she needs when she needs them. But that’s not the point. SONG OF THE DEEP is about finding the solutions to your problems–but mostly how you can be the solution, because Merry proves that being a girl is what makes her a success.

This short chapter book would be fun to read at bedtime with your daughters. The pictures are cute and the narrative style gives the story an immediacy, that despite the impossibility of it all, your daughters might well imagine that anything is possible.